Our attempt at Zentangles

So, I've been wanting to try Zentangles for a while now and Jill from Life with Nature Girl, was good enough to give us a bit of a guide ~ two pages of squares filled in with different shapes to fill in spaces on zentangles (which I highly recommend) I no longer had an excuse to put them off.

The kids and I sat down at the dining room table one afternoon. I showed them one of the Zentangle videos along with "The Quilt Rat's" gallery of artwork and we got to work on our own.

Nate was the first to finish his. He saw something in The Quilt Rat gallery and decided to do his own version.  He is a bit of a minimalist, as in ~ he'll do the absolute least he can get away with.  It doesn't work well in school but I think in this case, less was definitely more.  He shows great potential.  Now if I could only get him away from video games (I'm working on it, trust me).    Most zentangles I've seen were done with black ink but we were lacking in thick and thin black sharpee's so he opted for blue.  My favorite thing about his is the word "ocean" in the fish.  I just wish he had added more to the picture.  I think we'll work on doing this again soon.

Julianne was the next one finished.  She also decided to do a fish although she put lots of work into hers and really took the time to fill it all in.  She added waves on top along with a fish hook and coral on the bottom of the ocean.  Notice the word fish inside her fish.  One of my favorite things about her work is the sand dollars she added and the other thing I really like is the angle of her fish.  She really enjoyed doing this and is looking forward to doing more.  She is like a sponge when it comes to trying new things plus she really like doing stuff with me (which I really appreciate).  She opted for purple ink which also turned out very cool.   My only criticism for her was to make more light and more dark spots so there are very defined areas.

Last but not least is mine.  Please don't look too closely.   I've never considered myself an artist although this really was a lot of fun to do.   I worked with brown ink which gave it a bit of a retro look.  I had no plan in mind  but once I drew the heart (and the subsequent two hearts underneath a plan started to form.  It turned out to be a tribute of sorts to the summer of 69.  It started off with the word love and peace signs up one side of the heart and went from there.  I took about 2 days to do this.  I went back over some areas and filled in where there was a bit too much light.  Looking at it now, it could probably use some more dark areas.   Here's a close up of the one area that I pretty much filled in with words.  It's got everything from the Beatles to Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.  I would definitely do this again and it has so many possibilities like the acrylic clipboard Jill T. did for me or the fabric postcards that Jill B does.  How about a white coffee mug or a decorative glass plate.
It's a project that is fun for kids of all ages and grown up's too!
Give it a try ~ I'd love to see what you come up with.